The pursuit and purchase of physical possessions will never fully satisfy our desire for happiness. It may result in temporary joy for some, but the happiness found in buying a new item rarely lasts longer than a few days. Researchers even have a phrase for this temporary fulfillment: retail therapy.

There are many reasons buying stuff won’t make us happy.

9 Reasons Buying Stuff Won’t Make You Happy

They all begin to fade. All possessions are temporary by nature. They look shiny and new in the store. But immediately, as soon as the package is opened, they begin to perish, spoil, or fade.

There is always something new right around the corner. New models, new styles, new improvements, and new features. From clothes and cars to kitchen gadgets and technology, our world moves forward. And planned obsolescence makes sure our most recent purchase will be out of use sooner rather than later.

Each purchase adds extra worry to our lives. Every physical item we bring into our lives represents one more thing that can be broken, scratched, or stolen.

Possessions require maintenance. The things we own require time, energy, and focus. They need to be cleaned, organized, managed, and maintained. And as a result, they often distract us from the things that truly do bring us lasting happiness.

Our purchases cost us more than we realize. In stores, products are measured in dollars and cents. But as Henry David Thoreau once said, “The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.” We don’t buy things with money, we buy them with hours from our lives.

We discover other people aren’t all that impressed. Subconsciously (and sometimes even consciously), we expect our newest purchases will impress other people. They will notice our new car, computer, jacket, or shoes. But most of the time, they are less impressed than we think. Instead, most of them are too busy trying to impress you with their newest purchase.

Someone else always has more. The search for happiness in possessions is always short-lived because it is based on faulty reasoning that buckles under its own weight. If happiness is found in buying stuff, those with more will always be happier. The game can never be won.

Shopping does not quench our desire for contentment. Contentment is never found in the purchase of more stuff. Our overflowing closets and drawers stand as proof. No matter how much we get, it’s never enough.

Experiences make us happier than possessions. All research points to the fact there are far more effective way to find happiness: enjoying life-changing experiences, for example.

And 1 Thing that Might

Adyashanti, the American-born spiritual teacher, offers a theory as to why the acquisition of new possessions provides only a temporal feeling of happiness. He explains it this way:

When we make a purchase and/or get what we want, we are temporarily happy and fulfilled. But the reason for happiness is not because we got what we wanted, but because for a brief period of time, we stopped wanting, and thus we experience peace and happiness.

On the topic of buying stuff, his thoughts are helpful. And I have repeated his theory dozens of times in private conversations. Of course, the natural conclusion of this thinking is to limit our desires and wants—to find peace and happiness by not wanting.

But for me, this conclusion falls short.

The goal of minimalism is not to remove desire entirely from my life. Instead, the goal of minimalism is to redirect my desires.

There are valuable pursuits available to us: love, justice, faith, compassion, contribution, redemption, just to name a few. These should be pursued with great fervor. But far too often, we trade the pursuit of lasting fulfillment for temporary happiness. We can do better. We can dream bigger.

Redirect your desires toward lasting pursuits. Find happiness there.

You will never find the right things looking in the wrong places. (tweet that)

About Joshua Becker

Writer. Inspiring others to live more by owning less.WSJ Bestselling author of The More of Less.

Comments

Hi, I couldn’t sleep and so I started surfing the web regarding “buying things you don’t need” and came across this blog. In the last few months my purchasing or just shopping/looking for things to buy as increased to the point I know it could become a problem. The reason is, I know, deep down if I “just buy that ring” everything will be okay and I will be happy. I did just that today and after only a few hours the “buzz” of the purchase has gone but I was back online searching for other items which I may not even buy. The issue can be the searching or shopping for items without actually purchasing them as the buying of them itself. It is frustrating as I am a reasonably intelligent person and know that what I am doing is pretty stupid. I am not buying expensive items, just stuff I don’t need. It is masking other underlying issues there the issues we all need to address, its just knowing what they are and where to start…..

Hello, just like you Ann, I too often buy things I don’t really need, especially clothes and jewellery. It has to stop, but I just can’t help myself at times it’s getting beyond a joke. How many pieces of jewellery does one person need I keep asking. I do feel down a lot of the time, I have no real social life to speak of, and I guess when I buy the jewellery and clothes, that I don’t need, I at least for a while feel ‘happy’, but it’s fleeting and foolhardy. When my Mother became ill about 4 years ago, I became her main carer, we don’t go out much and I think this hasn’t helped my obsession with buying online, it gives me something to hold onto. I am in recovery, in that I am limiting myself to only one item per month, sometimes two, but that’s my limit. I’m a very joyful person and have many close friends and family. I am also blessed to be in good health, so all things considered I have a lot to be thankful for. I just pray and ask God for guidance when I feel the urge rising within me to tap on the eBay application. It’s hard but getting easier. I’m trying to focus on things that matter. Of course jewellery matters! But not at the expense of everything else. Family, friends, good health and the love of our Heavenly Father are all we really should want.

Hi Valerie
I am a 65 year old male, have been unable to work for the past five years due to health problems, now I’m officially retired. The problem is I like shopping on Amazon, I can’t get by a day without checking their website to see what I can buy next. It used to be cell phones, then computers, my latest obsession is safety Razors, I decided I wanted to get back into wet shaving and started buying Razors, brushes, shave cream, soap, aftershave. I now have nine Razors! Five containers of different soaps and creams, and three shaving brushes, I’m always Looking for the perfect shave, I estimate I have spent about $1000 on shaving gear. It just seems I need to keep buying things to make me happy. As someone else said buying material things never makes you happy, you always want one more thing, it’s like taping sandwiches to your body, trying to satisfy your hunger. I’m going to spend more time reading my bible, getting closer to God is a lot more satisfying.

I used to think like you do as well, but then I realized something important: that is its not the things themselves that make us happy, but the experiences and feelings they bring us that do. Take books for example, it’s the knowledge and information within the pages that matter, not the physical books themselves. Same with art and other beautiful things. You don’t need to purchase and own them to appreciate their beauty. Another thing is, even books or art you treasure deeply now will eventually lose their charms as time pass because we keep changing and growing as a person, so is our interests and preferences. Yes there will probably be things that you’ll cherish forever, but those things are way fewer than you might think.

Thanks for this wonderful post. I have learned from personal experience that no amount of physical possession and achievement can earn one a lasting happiness. There will always be a great moment of happiness as soon we get whatever we desire, but after a while that same thing we treasured so much would start becoming irrelevant as soon as we see something else worth having.
The key to happiness to me is contentment

I learned first hand that material possessions will not make me happy. I learned this after busting my hump for over a decade to build up a great paying career. I hated the job, but it was great pay so I bought things trying to make me happy. It never worked and I left that job and stopped buying nonsense. Now my problem is that I don’t want to work a job I hate since the currency I earn is basically useless. It just pays bill to exist. Not much of a life is it? I’m never doing something I hate for money ever again. Been unemployed for almost 3 years and I’m getting close to ending my life. I never expected the truth about life to suck this bad. TL:DR: I’d rather be dead than be a slave.

Reading your post made me really sad, I felt I needed to reply. I know how you feel to be doing something you hate just to earn a good wage. Straight from school we are guided to get ‘good jobs’ which actually just means jobs that pay well – even if they make us miserable. I don’t know what I could say to help you, but I really hope that you find some kind of happiness soon. For me the things worth living for are natural, I think the world is a beautiful place and I feel privileged to be able to enjoy nature. I’ve decided to leave the UK to live somewhere more simple, perhaps somewhere in South America or Asia. I don’t know what I’m going to do and I don’t really care, I just know I don’t want to keep experiencing the mundane routine of earning money to get the next smartphone etc.. I think I’ll be happier somewhere where the most valuable things cost nothing.. I hope you find something that can fulfil your life, perhaps even something as simple as a new line of work that you actually enjoy rather than do for the money

I believe happiness is to have a plan, and to have certainty of being healthy, having shelter and food. I used to live in a so-called paradise island, but managed politically and economically in a terrible way. I also used to think that material possessions would make me happy, but living now in Canada and having almost everything I wanted, I now realized that living in a politically stable and economically secure first world country is what gives me the piece of mind to be happy. I see many people wanting to give up their jobs and lives to move to a so called island paradise in some shitty country, thinking that they can live forever swimming in a beach and eating coconuts and avocados. Once the euphoria of the new place is gone, then they want to move back to an orderly society. So you see, to me, happiness is having a plan for the future and pursue it with relative piece of mind and in good company.

Recently I did one of The most expensive investments of my life: I bought myself one day more freedom per week. So now I have all wednedays for me, my kids and all The Things I always wanted to do. Best decision ever. I love my job, but now even more ????

I just came across this site, and it so speaks to me and confirms the conclusions I have recently come to myself. Like others have commented, I “know” better but I don’t “do” better. If I tell myself “no more shoes!!” suddenly I am obsessed with jackets. Or swimsuits. Or bras. Or jeans. As soon as I acquire that thing that kept nagging at me, that I ‘had to have’, something else popped up – or I’d just online shop until a new obsession took hold. Then I’d comparison-shop for the best or cheapest version. Seems I can’t stop. I came to realize it is about what you focus your attention on! What you focus on gets magnified. We must be the gatekeepers of our EyeGates! I have realized this is like ANY form of addiction: It nags at you until you cave in and say “ok, just one more…” then you feel the relief of having acquired…then the guilt and condemnation of not needing it, having way more than you need! Then the compulsion to do it again, so soon! Never content, never satisfied. I always swore I would never be addicted to anything, so I’m shocked to realize – shopping has become an addiction! Like anything, the more you practice it, the more of a habit it becomes. The “too much stuff” has started to cause me anxiety and stress! I recently moved, and it is overwhelming to look at all the boxes yet to unpack and have not place for the “stuff” inside. I’m consignment-shopping, donating, and garage-sale-ing much of it already, and am grateful I stumbled across this site to confirm and support my new resolution to simplify once again.

This has helped me so very much . Yes, I’m home a lot . The only thing I enjoy is ordering more clothes, more shoes, more jewelry I will never wear . It’s very depressing . I must stop .
You buy more things , then you need a place to store them ,, you have so many “” THINGs “” you don’t even know what you own.

Thank you for your blog. I am struggling with my husband really deeply. He has an addiction to buying stuff. It started with clothes, shoes, husker items, and moved up to trucks, cars, 4 wheelers, go karts, dirt bikes, and boats. It is a huge issue because we have 6 kids to support and do not make a lot of money. When I tell my husband we can’t afford to make a purchase he gets angry. Very angry. He says the meanest things a human can say, gets violent, threatens bodily harm to me even while pregnant and has even followed through on those threats a few times. He also threatens to make me miserable every day for the rest of my life if I do not give in, or threatens divorce. I realized this is bigger than him not getting his way when I stood my ground and told him no for the first time. He became very ill and couldn’t sleep or go to work. He has never called into work before even when he’s been sick with a virus, or a severe migraine. It clicked, he is having a withdrawal. This is just like a drug addiction. There’s not a lot of information I could come across about this but your blog is helpful to this situation. Please keep my husband in your thoughts and prayers to overcome this addiction.

Both of my parents are hoarders, it’s been a lifetime of “stuff”. I don’t have anything to do with either of them now. Too bad their stuff was more important. I have stuff – it’s loved and used and on display. It does make me happy, but realize this – it’s stuff. It will never replace reading to my son, or sitting at the supper table each day with my family. I won’t care what price I paid for a vase on my death bed, but I will care if my loved ones are with me.